126 et seq.; for the acceptance in the miracle plays of the scriptural idea of light and darkness as independent creations, see Wright, Essays on Archeological Subjects, vol.ii, p.178; for an account, with illustrations, of the mosaics, etc., representing this idea, see Tikkanen, Die Genesis-mosaiken von San Marco, Helsingfors, 1889, p.

14 and 16 of the text and Plates I and II.

Very naively the Salerno carver, not wishing to colour the ivory which he wrought, has inscribed on one disk the word "LUX" and on the other "NOX." See also Didron, Iconographie, p.

482.
Thus, down to a period almost within living memory, it was held, virtually "always, everywhere, and by all," that the universe, as we now see it, was created literally and directly by the voice or hands of the Almighty, or by both--out of nothing--in an instant or in six days, or in both--about four thousand years before the Christian era--and for the convenience of the dwellers upon the earth, which was at the base and foundation of the whole structure.
But there had been implanted along through the ages germs of another growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the Babylonian period.

In the Assyrian inscriptions we find recorded the Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of AN EVOLUTION of the universe out of the primeval flood or "great deep," and of the animal creation out of the earth and sea.